Images of Baryon Acoustic Bscillations with Cosmic Microwave Background by E.M. Huff, the SDSS-III team, and the South Pole Telescope team. Graphic by Zosia Rostomian (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Image of the LHC by CERN Photo

Image of Bullet Cluster by NASA/ Chandra X-ray Center

Image of the merging black hole binary system into One by SXS, the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) project

The discovery of gravitational wave advances observational astronomy and the discovery of 125-GeV Higgs boson have brought paradigm shifts on the potential connections between new fundamental particles and our understanding of their impact on the early universe and its evolution. With the content of the universe well known from astrophysical observations, a key aspect is that 27% of the universe appears to consist of dark matter. If current theories are correct, the particle physics candidate for this matter may well be observed in ongoing direct and/or indirect dark matter detection experiments or at the LHC. In addition, about 69% of the universe, the dark energy, still remains a significant mystery that major theoretical attempts are trying to understand.

The objectives of PPC 2017 are to analyze the connection between dark matter and particle physics models, discuss the connections among dark matter, grand unification models and recent neutrino results, explore predictions for ongoing and forthcoming experiments, develop a theoretical understanding of the three-neutrino oscillation parameters, provide a stimulating venue for exchange of scientific ideas among experts in these areas, communicate the importance of underground science research in dark matter, neutrino physics, unification and proton decay to the general public, support of investment in science education. The latest results from the LHC, AMS02, PLANCK, FERMI, LUX, IceCube, Juno, Super-K, LIGO/aLIGO, VIRGO, KAGRA and other experiments will be discussed along with theoretical interpretations and predictions for the upcoming experiments.